


Aut Vincere Aut Mori

by BotanyCameos



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-21 18:13:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BotanyCameos/pseuds/BotanyCameos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of snippets of various lengths about Khan and his crew, covering from birth until the moment his crew and him fled Earth in the Botany Bay.</p><p>It tells of the little augments' childhood in the labs of the eugenics project, of their youth in the war and of their yearning for freedom and later success at conquering a place where they would finally be in charge and where no one could enslave them and make them fight someone's wars anymore.</p><p>At times the tale is sad, at times bittersweet... at times fluffy, at times tragic. And more often than not, it is dark and heavy. But it's written with love, for Khan and his family, even in the worst moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aut Vincere Aut Mori

**Author's Note:**

> Analysis of the canon (scroll down if you just want the fic):
> 
> In canon Star Trek, the augments like Khan and the others were created by scientists trying to make super soldiers that would be able to put an end to the wars that had been raging (WWIII). They were created using selective breeding and genetic engineering, and were "engineered to lead others to peace in a world at war".
> 
> Selective breeding + genetic engineering more or less boils down to a bunch of scientists having people at their disposal to do experiments on and to breed them and use their children to create super soldiers etc.
> 
> It's unlikely the people being bred for that program and being experimented on had much of a say in what was done to them or to their progeny. So it's probable that Khan and the others were born as property of a lab, not much more than slaves bred for war and in an attempt to create perfect beings/living weapons.  
> And we can imagine how their life must have been since the scientists must not have wanted to take any risks that might lead to their potentially dangerous creations fleeing their control or turning against them.
> 
> As Spock mentions in Space Seed, that was a terrible time of Earth's history.
> 
> And since we know that despite being created by those scientists and used for the war, Khan and many other augments would later go on to become free and seize control of 40 different countries, that means that at some point, they broke free from the control of the people who created them, and managed to turn the tables and seize control for themselves, at least in some areas. 
> 
> According to canon Star Trek, Khan and his people lived in peace on their territory (no wars or massacres where Khan ruled) and didn't harm the population, while the other augment leaders in other countries went a very different path.
> 
>  **Khan was a huge exception because he was the only augment leader not doing any massacres.** So presumably, massacres must have happened in all the other augment ruled countries.  
>  (Hence in STID nu!Spock's assumption that augments would try to wipe out beings they viewed as inferior --because the other augment rulers did such things. Spock probably remembered something like that from Earth history, but did not know Khan and his people were the exception, and he was too busy to check right in the middle of the battle.)
> 
> Eventually, other augment leaders attempted to invade the land ruled by Khan. With the fighting going on, the normal/non-augmented human governments (the whole rest of the world minus the 40 countries ruled by augments) jumped on that chance to get rid of augments while they were busy warring each other, and the tide of war turned badly for the 'superior' beings. 
> 
> (Continued in the end note).

 

 

His oldest memory was that of the white ceiling of the lab.

Strapped to a table in the surgery room, his entire world was made of that white ceiling, of the pain racking his body, and of the cold burn of the restraints around his wrists, ankles, chest and neck.

He stared at that white expanse on and on, because even when the harsh artificial light burned his weary eyes beyond the point where tears could no longer run down the tired tracks on his face, it was still a welcome distraction from the feeling of being unmade and remade by every experiment carried on him, by the relentless series of shots that made him feel like his whole body would liquefy from the inside out, or by the microsurgeries and the tests, each of the series of things done to check how well the improvements the scientists had done to his genes performed, as his body developed.

Generations of selective breeding combined with genetic engineering at the embryo stage and additional genetic improvements post-birth, now culminated with those very last touches, to create individuals as close to absolute perfection as they could possibly make them.

Entire armies of them.

The men in white lab coats leaned over him to add yet another IV drip or to check his stats, and they all looked at him as if he was a masterpiece of a painting, to which they were adding the very last brushstrokes. Later, when he got old enough to read, he would discover Frankenstein, and wonder if that was the look on the doctor's face as he bent over his creature to sew the pieces together.

Only, Frankenstein's creation looked torn up on the outside, while Khan looked like a demigod... but growing up he felt as torn up inside as the creature looked.

At the moment it was happening to him though, all that he could think of was that he wanted to scream but couldn't find the strength to.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (Continuation of the canon analysis):
> 
> History is always written by the victors, so augments were all declared criminals and a witch-hunt happened. (And according to Space Seed the records of the period were very fragmented, so a lot could have been tampered with by the governments that seized power on the territories that had been with the augments... for example, they claimed there were no augments left after this war was over, to avoid the population knowing they hadn't managed to capture Khan and his people. Spock mentions this in Space Seed.)
> 
> It is not clear what happened to the other augments from the other countries, but considering the fear the governments ran by normal humans had of them, and the fact Khan and his people are supposed to be the last ones, it's likely that the other augments were executed. 
> 
> The Botany Bay ship and the cryotubes were Khan and his people's way to flee either execution or whatever the normal humans might have done to them if they'd been caught.
> 
> The need to flee was so significant that Khan and his people set the ship's navigation to attempt to reach a different solar system, so unsafe it was to stay in the same solar system as Earth! (And that even though ships in that time period were not built for that, and according to Space Seed **their chance of surviving and reaching the destination they tried for was 1 in 10,000!!** In fact, the ship did fail to reach it and just lost course, its hull all damaged by meteor strikes, floating aimlessly through space, with malfunctioning old systems, its cryotubes failing and the people inside dying, until the Enterprise came across it totally by luck, in Space Seed, or until Admiral Marcus' deep search ships found them in the reboot timeline.)
> 
> They knew their ship was not built for travel to a different solar system, but still took the risk against such terrible odds. **The fate they would have faced on Earth must have been quite terrible for them to be willing to face such odds to try and find a way to flee.**
> 
> The picture it all paints is quite tragic and one that gives me the urge to write about what their past, childhood, early youth etc. might have been like, and bits of what might have happened until the Botany Bay was found.


End file.
